New Build Housing in San Francisco

This animated map shows new housing construction in San Francisco by decade- since 1900. The map provides a clear picture of how the number of new homes built in the city has been declining since the 1970s.

The orange dots on the map represent the locations of units built in that decade, while the gray dots show the existing housing stock from previous decades.

The map is part of San Francisco Housing Units by Year Built, an analysis of historical housing construction in San Francisco using Historical Secured Property Tax Rolls. This analysis also includes a bar graph that plots the number of Single-Family Residential and Multi-Family Residential units built each year.

The graph tells a more nuanced story about the city’s residential construction history. It reveals that the building of Single-Family Residential homes has largely halted in this century. However, the construction of Multi-Family Residential units has increased significantly since 2000. While it has not returned to the peak levels of the 1920s, it remains substantially higher than in most decades from 1930 to 2000.